ng
when he heard them trying to burst in his front door.

The corporal sent his native cook to the rear door, while he fixed his
bayonet to his rifle and stood guard over the front door. They had it
all but stove in when he began cutting loose like three men with his
rifle through the door. He killed a man there.

They then began to smash in the window nearest the door. He pried open
the window with his bayonet, and got there before them. There was a big
black fellow at the broken window. Our marine shot him dead, which gave
him time to turn to the side window, which they had now broken in with
the butts of their rifles. He got one there. There was another close up
whom he hit but did not kill; and he dropped another one on the edge of
the shadows outside. The cook, catching the spirit of the thing, killed
one at the rear door on his own account.

The bandits had enough, and left. Next evening, when his officer came
along with a squad, he found our corporal with his wounded under guard,
his four dead ones in a neat row, and himself and his cook frying
chicken in the twilight, cheerfully able to report that he had the
situation well in hand.

They are a sharpshooting rifle outfit. Down in Vera Cruz during the late
trouble a platoon of marines were at the foot of a street leading up
from the water-front. They had cleaned up things all about them and
thought they were in for a rest; and they wanted their rest--a hot
tropic day with the heat rolling off the asphalt where they lay.

There came a ping! of a rifle bullet among them; and half a minute or so
later another ping! They watched, and up the street they saw the head,
arm, and shoulder of a man with a rifle come poking around the corner of
a building, and ping! another one, and this time one of their men hit. A
bad hombre, that one.

"Get him!" said their officer, and named two of them to get him.

The two men lay down on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked
his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe
plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin;
but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards,
making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner
they both got him--one plumb between the eyes.

It was good shooting; but there was no special comment after it. The
talk would have come if they hadn't got him.

But it is not always a matter of fighting or shooting